with ten defeats, yea,
twenty defeats to one victory.

"Miss Anderson will think us harsh and unkind in this. She will live, we
hope, to consider us her best friend.

"There is one fact upon which she can comfort herself: she could not get
two hours and a half of our time and a column in the _Capitol_ were she
without merit. There is value in her; but to fetch it out she must go
back, begin lower, and give years to training, education, and hard work.
She can labor ten years for the sake of living five. As for her support,
it was of the sort afforded by John T., the showman, and very funny. Mrs.
Germon, God bless her! was properly funny. She is the best old woman on
end in the world.

"Romeo (Mr. Morton) we have spoken of. Lingham is supposed to have done
Mercutio. Well, he did do him. That is, he went through the motions. He
seemed to be saying something anent the great case of Capulet _vs._
Montague, but so indistinct that there was a general sense of relief when
he staggered off to die. Deaths generally had this effect Thursday night,
and the house not only applauded the exits, but made itself exceedingly
merry.

"When Paris went down and a tombstone fell over him, his plaintive cry of
'Oh, I am killed!' was received with shouts of laughter.

"It was the most laughable we ever witnessed. In the first scene one of
those marble statues, so peculiar to John T.'s mismanagement, that
resemble granite in a bad state of small-pox, fell over.

"The house was amazed to see it resolve itself into a board, and laughed
tumultuously to note how it righted itself up in a mysterious manner, and
stood in an easy reclining posture till the curtain fell.

"The scene that exhibited the balcony affair was a sweet thing. Evidently
the noble house of the Capulets was in reduced circumstances. The building
from which Juliet issued was a frame structure so frail in material that
we feared a collapse.

"If the carpenter who erected that structure for the Capulets charged more
than ten dollars currency he swindled the noble old duffer infamously. The
front elevation came under that order of architecture known out West as
Conestoga. It was all of fifteen feet in height, and depended for
ornamentation on a brilliant horse cover thrown over the corner of the
balcony, and a slop bucket that Juliet was evidently about to empty on the
head of Romeo when that youth made his presence known. The house shook so
under Juliet's substantial tread